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Post by mercian on Jan 7, 2022 14:24:41 GMT
Now I read ( wb61 ) :- "If the prosecution fail to prove to the jury, so that they are sure, that the Defendant's state of mind was such that they either knew or believed or were reckless as to whether their action was unlawful then the jury would enter a not guilty verdict." wb61 explains that this is ensure that I don't get prosecuted for breaking my own windows ( or statue !!). And to provide me with that protection it seems the price is that anyone can smash property up and simply say-didn't know it was illegal m'lud. I mean-who knew  Like most commenting on this, I am no lawyer, but didn't there used to be a legal principle that 'ignorance of the law is no excuse'? |
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domjg
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Post by domjg on Jan 7, 2022 14:26:41 GMT
tancred "most of their north African and near eastern lands would have been inhabited by peoples who would have been whiter than their modern populations" - Whhaatt?? I'm not even sure what point this is supposed to be making but I'm pretty sure that the Arab conquest of North Africa brought mainly religion, culture and language not ethnicity or a replacement of population. The Berbers who are still a large part of the population of this region are remaining direct cultural descendants of the original people and they don't look any different to the Arabic dialect speaking inhabitants that I'm aware of. Berbers are usually whiter than Arabs - generally closer in appearance to Spanish people in most cases. The Arab invasions did change the population as they mixed with the native Berbers, perhaps more in Libya and Tunisia than elsewhere in the Maghreb. As for Roman times, Carthage, for example, was mostly inhabited by Iberians, and the statues of Hannibal clearly show that he was a white man. I can't quite believe I'm engaging on this but even if this is true (and I don't think it is) so what? It would matter not one jot if we were talking about very different appearances but at best the difference even if it exists must be negligible. Invading cultures tend to add more language and custom than they do genes though obviously they add some. I seem to remember a genetic comparison between a skeleton many thousands of years old and the current inhabitants of somewhere in the West of England I think it was which showed a huge correlation between the two genetically despite many iterations of culture and language in between (Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Pre-celtic). |
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 7, 2022 14:27:33 GMT
Like most commenting on this, I am no lawyer, but didn't there used to be a legal principle that 'ignorance of the law is no excuse'? Me neither. Yes -I thought so too. Apparently they changed "no" to "an" .  |
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steve
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Post by steve on Jan 7, 2022 14:28:09 GMT
tancred Unless you have a photo of Hannibal Barca to hand it's difficult to establish what colours was, there are no descriptions in any contemporary accounts of his appearance and its a tad difficult to establish colour from a marble statue. The carthaginians were Phoenician and originated in the area around modern day northern Egypt or Israel, they probably resembled these people in appearance and pigmentation.
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Post by robert on Jan 7, 2022 14:28:58 GMT
Hireton "So are you proposing that a jury should be chosen which is not the same demographic and not local to the accused?" Well it might increase the likliehood of juries being dispassionate about a case. It would also stop the shenanigans steve described earlier about local criminals sitting in each other's trials and acquitting each other. |
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steve
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Post by steve on Jan 7, 2022 14:34:12 GMT
tancred Oh dear look it up yourself , slavery wasn't particularly common in 16th century England , the vast majority of black people weren't slaves,and you seem to belabouring under some bizarre misconception that indentured people and servants don't have children and didn't have sexual relationships with anyone else. Regarding the presence of black people in the royal navy by the end of the eighteenth century you need to go no further than the base of Nelson's column to see evidence.
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Post by wb61 on Jan 7, 2022 14:34:17 GMT
There are only very limited circumstances where acquittal by a Jury can be appealed where the acquittal resulted from interference with or intimidation of a juror or witness. colinJurors are selected randomly by civil servants. As I understand it this is now a centralised system which relies on the electoral register (but I cannot guarantee that). At court a jury panel is assembled for a particular week, court clerks are given a number between 15 and 18 names of the panel for a particular case which they are dealing with (most courts will have three to five courts in operation at any one time) and the names will be on a series of cards which are shuffled and the first twelve names selected. None of the lawyers will have any advance notice of this panel. Prior to this the group of 15 to 18 will have in many, but not all courts, have been given a questionnaire with specific questions relating to their knowledge of witnesses etc. which may disqualify them from hearing that particular case, if there is no such questionnaire the Judge will usually ask those questions of the panel before the 12 are selected. Once selected because those questions have been asked there is rarely any objection to a Juror. Objections to a juror must be for cause, and that cause must be explored in open court. I have rarely seen objections and these have usually been because a relevant question has not been asked beforehand, so that for instance a juror knows a barrister in the case. |
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Post by mercian on Jan 7, 2022 14:36:42 GMT
Back to polling. This is a general point, rather than a comment on a specific poll. AW used to give very good commentary on how polling questions can be phrased badly or given in a particular order to influence the answers that are given. To fill the long hours while waiting for the sweet embrace of death 🤣 I do online polls sometimes for Yougov and others. These aren't just on political subjects and there is nearly always some logical anomaly which I point out in a vain effort to improve the quality.
There have been a few recently asking about the effects of Covid on one's life. They start off asking your work status, which is retired in my case. Then later they ask if you are saving more or less for retirement because of Covid, with no N/A option. A trivial example perhaps but it does make me wonder about the quality of the staff designing these polls, and therefore of the quality of the results they produce.
I suppose even badly-designed questions will show a trend if the same question is asked again, but how meaningful is it?
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Post by mercian on Jan 7, 2022 14:39:03 GMT
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domjg
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Post by domjg on Jan 7, 2022 14:41:10 GMT
mercian Thanks, part of me wondered if I'd imagined it..
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Post by steamdrivenandy on Jan 7, 2022 14:42:39 GMT
Like most commenting on this, I am no lawyer, but didn't there used to be a legal principle that 'ignorance of the law is no excuse'? The problem is that, as the Secret Barrister pointed out, there were multiple legal principles by which the jury could have come to their decision and they're not allowed to say which one and how they arrived at it. So they could have agreed that ignorance was no excuse, but if another principle or other principles were tested and indicated innocence then the ignorance issue wasn't relevant. |
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Post by wb61 on Jan 7, 2022 14:46:53 GMT
Ignorance of the law will not assist a Defendant, but two examples show the distinction: imagine a crime is enacted of publishing an inaccurate opinion poll.
(1) D1 publishes a poll which is inaccurate: he has obtained the poll knows it is inaccurate but is unaware of the crime: he will be guilty because he knows the poll is inaccurate and has published deliberately: the fact that he is unaware of the existence of the crime does not protect him.
(2) D2 publishes the same poll: however she believes the poll to be accurate and has not come to that conclusion recklessly (recklessly defined not caring or giving any thought to whether the poll is accurate). Her defence is one of lack of knowledge of facts not knowledge of the law and she would not have the mental element of the guilty mind.
Properly considered D1 is guilty but D2 is not.
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Post by leftieliberal on Jan 7, 2022 14:49:17 GMT
I am aware of the Iliad, but this is a legend, not literal historical fact. And even if true, 'dark' may simply means swarthy, not black skinned. |
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Post by robert on Jan 7, 2022 14:49:56 GMT
My final comment on this subject has to do with the decision of this secret barrister, whoever he is, attacking one of his fellows from his position of secrecy. I would hope that Barrett might follow this up with the Law Society as in my view, it is beyond reprehensible for a fellow barrister to be engaging in such an underhand practice.
Clearly, our judges and lawyers are just as political as their counterparts in the US. The difference is, in this country you are allowed to keep your sympathies hidden. In the US they are more exposed.
As for ignorance of the law being a defence as someone suggested, I learnt in 1972 in my banking exams that: ignorantia legis neminem excusat (ignorance of the law excuses no one.)
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Post by somerjohn on Jan 7, 2022 14:50:30 GMT
Tancred: "the majority of these people were servants or slaves of one kind or another. There is no evidence that they intermarried into the general population in large numbers."I don't really understand why anyone would wish to downplay the presence of people of African or Asian origin in Britain as the Empire expanded. Isn't it to be expected that the conquerors would bring some of their conquerees home? And that some of those captured for slavery should end up here? Anyway, though rather later than the 16th century, here is an interesting snippet from a BBC feature on the 1921 census. The mixed couple had five children (up till then - his wife was only 32) so his genes are probably in a few hundred descendants by now: The doctor from Jamaica
There were 1,712 Jamaican-born people living in England and Wales in 1921 - according to the census.
Dr Harold Moody was one of the most prominent. He had finished at the top of his class studying medicine at King's College London.
His census return shows him living on King's Road (now King's Grove) in Peckham, south-east London, in a 10-room house. He was then 38 - and his wife, Olive, who'd been born in Henley, was 32. The couple had five young children.
Also living with them was a "general domestic" servant - a 17-year-old girl called Frances Hinds, who had been born in Hampstead.
Extracts from Harold Moody's 1921 Census form
Moody described himself as a "medical practitioner" working from home. He had set up his own practice in 1913 after struggling to find employment.
In 1931, he established the League of Coloured Peoples to campaign for black rights in the UK. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59879470 |
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Post by leftieliberal on Jan 7, 2022 14:54:47 GMT
There wasn't any element of reasonable doubt on display here it was blindingly obvious that no evidence was going to be sufficient. |
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bantams
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Post by bantams on Jan 7, 2022 14:56:25 GMT
For those who drink alchohol and who live in Ireland there's some chastening news on new pricing brought in this week. A 70cl bottle of whisky (whiskey) will now cost a minimum of 22-00 Euro. Someone has made a sketch of this which is very funny IMO:
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oldnat
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Post by oldnat on Jan 7, 2022 14:59:12 GMT
I served on a jury at Birkenhead Crown Court c1974. Elderly woman accused of nicking a tin of mince value 68p from the Co-op. No previous. Unappealing store detective. Had opted for Crown Court despite potential longer sentence to prove her innocence. In th jury it was like 12 angry men. Most of us (maybe all) thought 'she done it' but one guy thought we should acquit because a) it was 68p b) she was old and humble c) store detective was horrible d) ruining an old woman's life for that... After a couple of hours debate we found her not guilty. The important point is that guymonde has broken the law by describing the deliberations of the jury of which he is a member. An admission of criminal behaviour by a respected member of this forum should at least have resulted in an outburst of outrage by those who are insistent on all breaches of the law being severely punished, if not demands for immediate defenestration, incarceration, bankruptcy or all three sanctions. |
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Post by c-a-r-f-r-e-w on Jan 7, 2022 14:59:41 GMT
Be reasonable - there isn’t a chatspeak for ‘sneer’. Oh, you might find lots of ways of doing it, Paul. Like moaning about having to scroll all the time. Jibes about people discussing statues. Doesn’t make a lot of sense staying somewhere you have to keep scrolling, if you don’t like scrolling. Like crashing a party and complaining about the music. |
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bantams
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Post by bantams on Jan 7, 2022 15:06:54 GMT
I served on a jury at Birkenhead Crown Court c1974. Elderly woman accused of nicking a tin of mince value 68p from the Co-op. No previous. Unappealing store detective. Had opted for Crown Court despite potential longer sentence to prove her innocence. In th jury it was like 12 angry men. Most of us (maybe all) thought 'she done it' but one guy thought we should acquit because a) it was 68p b) she was old and humble c) store detective was horrible d) ruining an old woman's life for that... After a couple of hours debate we found her not guilty. The important point is that guymonde has broken the law by describing the deliberations of the jury of which he is a member. An admission of criminal behaviour by a respected member of this forum should at least have resulted in an outburst of outrage by those who are insistent on all breaches of the law being severely punished, if not demands for immediate defenestration, incarceration, bankruptcy or all three sanctions. For a minute there I thought you wrote immediate castration which would have been a tad strong.............. |
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Post by crossbat11 on Jan 7, 2022 15:07:57 GMT
tancredI can't help feeling that a lot of what you post demonstrates the truth of the old proverb that says "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing." There's a touch of less is more in there somewhere too.
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Post by leftieliberal on Jan 7, 2022 15:09:48 GMT
The then vacant plinths could then be used to mount statues of folk (especially women) who are more appropriate role models for today's society. |
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Post by somerjohn on Jan 7, 2022 15:17:04 GMT
Carfrew: "Like crashing a party and complaining about the music.
A poor analogy.
Like every other member of this forum, Crofty is here by (open) invitation. He has not crashed the party and has every right to complain about the poor manners of other guests.
FWIW, I interpret 'LOL' as an expression of derision and would be happy to see its use banned here.
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Post by steamdrivenandy on Jan 7, 2022 15:17:52 GMT
Statuegate seems to have become a giant squirrel and we're forgetting our primary purposes. That is to denigrate the PM and his so called party (was it their music you were referring to Carfers?) and provide useful purchasing information on fridge freezers.
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Post by leftieliberal on Jan 7, 2022 15:19:49 GMT
Stephen Bush on "Can Labour and the Liberal Democrats unite to defeat the Conservatives?"
www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-politics/2022/01/can-the-labour-and-liberal-democrat-leaders-unite-to-defeat-the-conservatives
One strange irony of the doomed Miliband era is that, behind the scenes, relations between the two so-called progressive parties remained in fairly good order. Jonny Oates, Clegg’s chief of staff, remained in discreet but frequent contact with Stewart Wood, one of Miliband’s closest aides. It took Corbyn’s election as Labour leader in 2015 to sever communication between the two offices.
under Keir Starmer, the two leaders’ offices are once again in regular conversation. Starmer concedes that, while Labour will stand a candidate in every constituency at the next election (excluding those in Northern Ireland), the party will campaign less aggressively in seats where the Lib Dems are the main Tory challenger.
Looking good. Of course an overall majority for Labour like in 1997 will make it all moot, but an informal understanding has the advantage that Labour do not have to consider a deal with the SNP until after the General Election, depending on the outcome.
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Post by c-a-r-f-r-e-w on Jan 7, 2022 15:21:00 GMT
Carfrew: "Like crashing a party and complaining about the music.A poor analogy. Like every other member of this forum, Crofty is here by (open) invitation. He has not crashed the party and has every right to complain about the poor manners of other guests. FWIW, I interpret 'LOL' as an expression of derision and would be happy to see its use banned here. Who said he couldn’t be here, or complain? I just pointed out that it’s a bit pointless to be somewhere he finds so many posts not to his taste, and to keep complaining when people are obviously into what they are talking about. I’m not into the statue thing much myself but obviously others are and are advancing the argument. Complaining about lol is pretty desperate. |
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Post by c-a-r-f-r-e-w on Jan 7, 2022 15:26:23 GMT
Statuegate seems to have become a giant squirrel and we're forgetting our primary purposes. That is to denigrate the PM and his so called party (was it their music you were referring to Carfers?) and provide useful purchasing information on fridge freezers. Well Fridges are a gender issue now. And Paul said this isn’t a site for fridge comparison. (But it was ok when he wanted to compare iPad specs). |
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Post by c-a-r-f-r-e-w on Jan 7, 2022 15:30:05 GMT
Tancred:
I am a remainer and have always been in favour of the Euro because it seemed a logical next step.It's odd that so many seem to see our non-membership of the euro as an unalloyed benefit. Sometimes that's just another facet of the sovereignty/patriotism/nationalism thing. Where more concrete reasons are adduced for that view, they usually amount to the ability to devalue and the freedom to set interest rates. So it's interesting that since the referendum we have exercised neither freedom: the £/€ exchange rate and respective interest rates have remained pretty much in lock-step. One the other hand, the very real benefits of a single currency are barely ever mentioned or acknowledged in UK discussions. For businesses, the elimination of exchange rate risk and uncertainty, and the elimination of exchange costs, are very tangible benefits. And for consumers, especially those living near borders, not having to fiddle around with different currencies is a boon. Can anyone imagine Europe would be a better place if the EU still had 27 different currencies? Or that the UK would suffer no disbenefits if sterling were broken into four independently-variable currencies? So I think there are more compelling reasons for applauding the euro than that it's a "logical next step." The fact is that, as we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the launch of euro notes and coins (or not: I haven't actually seen a single mention of the anniversary), it's clear that the single currency been a resounding success and is here to stay. Since you are here. You say that “Where more concrete reasons are adduced for that view, they usually amount to the ability to devalue and the freedom to set interest rates.” Carefully-worded there, you’re not saying what you personally think are the main advantages of having our own currency. Do you yourself think it is just those two things, or is there anything else quite important? |
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Post by pete on Jan 7, 2022 15:31:29 GMT
I find it amazing people are so up in arms about a statue of a slave trader being toppled and yet never up in arms about how many are homeless or using food banks, you know struggling to fecking survive in Tory Britain. It really does say something about some peoples priorities in life.
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Post by hireton on Jan 7, 2022 15:32:09 GMT
Hireton "So are you proposing that a jury should be chosen which is not the same demographic and not local to the accused?" Well it might increase the likliehood of juries being dispassionate about a case. It would also stop the shenanigans steve described earlier about local criminals sitting in each other's trials and acquitting each other. So essentially you want to abandon one, perhaps the most important, of the underlying principles of trial by jury. Presumably, this would mean for example, no women on a jury for a trial of serious domestic abuse against a woman? No parents on a jury for a trial concerning child abuse? How could they be expected to be "dispassionate" about such cases? |
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